


it sucks you into the jaws of anger

by SafelyCapricious



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Dark, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Non-Consensual Touching, Threats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:22:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4141041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma knew what being in the incentives program meant. It meant that she'd let HYDRA use her mind under threat to her parents. </p><p>Then things got complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it sucks you into the jaws of anger

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: “What do you keep writing in that notebook?” on tumblr

Jemma eyed the tubes in front of her and shook her head, directing her comments over her shoulder to where Lucy was. “We don’t have the right elution buffer to do this – the ab/ag elution might work, but I’ve never used it for immunoprecipitation before and it’ll be months to get another batch if we can’t get viable results from this. So why don’t we leave it in the RNA free water in the four until we can check to see if the other lab has the one molar glycerin buffer we need.” She turned, to make sure that Lucy was writing this down instead of just gazing in confusion – only to find that her lab tech had fled and been replaced by Ward.

He was smiling at her and leaning against her lab bench. She bit back the urge to tell him that the surface hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned and that he really shouldn’t be touching it. His grin grew and he said, “I couldn’t follow any of that, but please, continue. I like listening to you talk.”

She frowned and resisted the urge to step back away from him. The aisle between the lab benches was wide enough that people could be working on either side and someone could pass through while carrying a tray full of glassware without hitting either of them. It didn’t seem wide enough. There was no sign of her lab tech anywhere, although her sweatshirt was still tossed over the chair in front of the computer. “What did you do to Lucy?”

He held his hands out from his body in a mock harmless gesture and arched an eyebrow at her. “Do? I didn’t _do_ anything to her.” He flashed her a smirk and finished with a smug, “She seemed in a hurry though.” He stepped closer, held out a hand, and inexplicably introduced himself, “Grant Ward.”

She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up, clenching her jaw. “I know who you are.”

He smiled, seemingly not taking offense, dropping his hand and looking pleased. It wasn’t adorable. “Oh, you’ve heard of me?”

She scoffed and said, “You threatened to eviscerate Lorenzo last week.”

He still looked pleased, though she thought he was maybe trying to go for humble, as he shrugged and said, “Did I? I’m sure he deserved it.”

He hadn’t. She grit her teeth and turned away. Reaching for a pair of gloves and snapping them on with more force than necessary. Lucy should’ve, by rights, been the one putting everything away. But the other woman had fled and Jemma was glad to have something to do that let her ignore him. How the specialists treated them was intolerable, but the things that would happen if she were to raise a fuss…Far better to be busy working and hope he went away.

He didn’t seem to understand the nonverbal cues, however, and asked, nonchalant, “So, what would I have to do to get a date?”

She froze, hand clenching around microtubules painfully. She had to take several deep breaths before she could force herself to move again. Now her hands were shaking badly, but her voice was steady when she said, “You know I’m in the incentives program.”

She didn’t hear anything, but she was beyond hoping that he would’ve actually gone. When he spoke again his voice was right behind her. He asked, “So?”

She didn’t want to turn around. She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want a lot of things, but she’d gotten somewhat used to that. She grit her teeth, took a deep breath and turned around. “So, are you threatening them?” She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes he was standing so close.

She wasn’t sure how to categorize the look in his eyes, but she found herself unable to bare to look at it for long and so she focused her gaze on the bridge of his nose instead. He wouldn’t be able to tell she wasn’t meeting his eyes so she wouldn’t lose anything by it.

He didn’t say anything.

She waited.

After a long moment he asked, and his voice sounded wistful, “Is that the only way?”

She didn’t believe it for a second. He was one of HYDRA’s best. If he was breathing, he was lying. She shrugged, lightly, and said, “If I go on a date with you to keep you from threatening them in the first place, it boils down to the same as if I were to go on a date with you to keep you from carrying out whatever your threat is. We are not in a balanced position of power and if you were to ask me out I would be obligated to say yes regardless of my own feelings on the matter – which I can only assume are not important to you. But I would prefer if you were at least honest about it, to me and to yourself.” She blindly reached back for the box with the samples in it, and then once she had it she slid out from between him and the counter and made her way to the fridge.

He was gone when she turned around.

She collapsed against the fridge door on weak knees, not sure if she should be relieved he was gone or terrified of what he was going to do to her family.

Lorenzo, she decided, was lucky.

He’d only gotten threatened.

**

Two weeks passed without any sign of Grant Ward.

She knew better than to be hopeful. This was no place for hope, not for anyone in the incentives program.

Lucy had shown up the next day, deeply apologetic. Jemma had smiled softly and told her it was fine. The girl – woman really, but she’d only just graduated Sci-Tech when SHIELD had fallen and Jemma had trouble thinking of her as being the same age – was a fairly new addition to Jemma’s lab team. She was jumpier than any of the rest of them combined, but she’d been at the Fridge when it had fallen, and everyone from there continued to be more traumatized than the others.

Jemma had never asked.

If she got too friendly with any of her laboratory staff they were removed and replaced. She’d rather have Lucy think she just didn’t care than have her be taken and forced to work somewhere else. Jemma couldn’t be friendly, but she could be fair and she’d seen some of the marks other staff had on them from other rotations.

She couldn’t say she was overly surprised when she turned around, one day, and found him standing right behind her.

She frowned and stepped around him, placing the antibodies she was using into the ice bucket before looking around. Lucy, much to her surprise, was still at her lab bench shoulders hunched and hands trembling badly enough on the pipette that Jemma would’ve been worried about contamination, had she actually wanted any of their experiments to succeed.

He cleared his throat, and she sighed and straightened her back before turning to him.

He offered her a smile she didn’t return, before he asked with a soft voice, “Did you find what you needed to get the immunosuppression thing to work?”

“Immunoprecipitation,” she corrected him without thinking and then immediately winced.

HYDRA, as a whole, treated her very delicately. If one could ignore that they had her parents captured, as well as having Fitz and his parents held somewhere else. The one lesson she’d had to learn the hard way, as it was, was that it was better to not correct anyone. They didn’t appreciate it.

Ward, however, simply tilted his head and said, “Did you find what you were missing for the immunoprecipitation then?”

She hesitated, and nodded. It was a funny story, actually. They had spent a full two days asking around in other labs until they’d stopped asking for it by name and started reminding people that they were looking for an amino-acid, and then they’d managed to find a whole tub of the stuff, only to discover when they went to put away their newly acquired 50 mL conical tube of the powder, that they had some as well.

She didn’t tell him that.

He smiled, brilliantly and she wondered what it must be like to be able to be here by choice and able to smile like that.

She hated him a little for it.

(She envied him a little for it too, and hated that she did.)

“So,” he elongated the word in a way she was sure he meant to be teasing. It only made her wince because she knew what was coming. She was unsurprised when he continued with, “Would you like to get lunch with me?”

She glanced at the clock, surprised to see that it was, in fact, already twelve-thirty. She’d already corrected him, she didn’t want to press the issue but – she shook her head sharply and turned back to her lab bench, picking up a pen so she could make some careful notations. “I’ll have a rations bar when I get hungry.”

She could hear the frown in his voice when he said, from right behind her, “But then I won’t have the pleasure of your company.”

She didn’t bother to disguise her instinctive flinch, but she also didn’t look at him. She was proud that her hands and voice weren’t trembling at all when she said, “Be that as it may, I have work to finish here.”

He sighed, his breath gusting across the back of her neck, and said, “Dinner, then.”

She grimaced and her grip on her pen tightened. “Is that an order?”

His hand on her upper arm was light but she still moved with it as he turned her around. He was frowning down at her, brow furrowed, as he said, “Most people would just accept.”

She stared fixedly over his shoulder and said, “I will, if it’s an order. I love my parents very much.” She could only imagine her parents’ horror at what she’d do to keep them safe. But she loved them and if it wasn’t them than it would’ve been someone else. No one would get hurt because of her, not if she could help it.

Practice kept her from fidgeting as he didn’t respond for a long moment. Eventually, voice heavy, he said, “Other people in the incentives program have accepted dates.” She could see the flash of his teeth out of the corner of her eye. “Dates and more.”

She had to bite her lip not to respond.

The hand that was still on her shoulder tightened and he said, “Say whatever you’re going to say, beautiful, I promise I won’t punish you for it.”

She didn’t believe him at all. But the words still spilled out like poison. “If you slept with someone in the incentives program it was rape. Even if you promised them you wouldn’t hurt their incentives – it was rape because they had no way of knowing if you were telling the truth _and_ they didn’t actually have a choice. That is not how consent works.” She defiantly met his eyes at the last word, expecting a hit that didn’t come.

His eyes were dark and glittering, not apologetic but also not angry. No, he was curious when he asked, “So how do you know I won’t punish you for what you just said, by that logic?”

She tilted her chin up more and said, ignoring the soft panicked breathing of Lucy across the room, “I don’t. In fact, I expect you to go back on your word. You’re a Nazi and they are not historically known for their honesty.”

She flinched, she was ashamed to admit, when he reached out and brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “And you, I see, are very honest. You should be careful about that.”

She didn’t have to reply, because with that he was striding out the door.

She collapsed against her lab bench, her knees too weak to hold her.

Lucy rushed over a moment later, tears spilling out of her eyes.

**

It had been another week without him. Without anyone, really.

It was a slow day. She and Lucy had to make sure that nothing was going wrong with any of the experiments, but there were no readings to be taken or next steps. So even though it galled her to do it she was updating her lab notebook.

If it were only her life on the line she would’ve happily written lies. But it wasn’t. The most she allowed herself was poor penmanship and terse words.

She knew someone had entered the lab by the whimper of alarm that Lucy let out. The girl had been getting more jumpy recently, and Jemma resented that she couldn’t even try to get her help for her obvious PTSD.

It was a man in full tactical gear. It wasn’t Ward. He was too short to be Ward, even though he was wearing the full black facemask that some field agents donned. He was too short to be Ward.

She only felt relief for a moment before the first agent was followed by three more, dressed identically, and then a smartly dressed man in a suit. His shark smile made her shudder and he waved at her to sit back down. “Our business is with Miss Sadi at the moment, Miss Simmons. We’ll get to you in a moment.”

She bit her tongue hard enough to sting to hold off on correcting him. They both had their doctorates.

She sat back down and forced herself to go back to writing down her most recent experiment. She couldn’t hear anything specific from the other side of the room except for Lucy’s harsh breathing. She hated that she’d do more harm than good if she were to try to comfort the other woman. She forced herself to ignore everything else and just write.

“What do you keep writing in that notebook?” the sharply dressed man asked from far too close.

She could vaguely hear Lucy’s shaky breathing, and when she looked up she saw that all but one of the agents had come to stand behind her. She placed her pen down carefully and stood up so she could move away and let him see her lab notebook. “It’s the most recent notes from the memory erasing dendrotoxin experiment.”

He hummed, pleased, and leaned forward to read. He flipped back and read for a few moments before shutting her notebook fast enough that she flinched a little. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Write more neatly or I’ll see that something…hm…unfortunate happens to Miss Sadi.”

Jemma could feel the blood drain from her face as she braced herself with a hand against the counter behind her. He was clearly expecting a response so she swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He arched an eyebrow at her and stepped closer still. She had to clench her jaw not to flinch when he gripped her chin between his finger and thumb and turned her head this way and that. “My, you’re quite pretty for a SHIELD slut aren’t you?” Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the agents take half a step forward, but then he shook her slightly by her chin and she focused back on him. His grip tightened when she didn’t say anything and his voice was icy when he ordered, “Answer the question.”

It took her two tries to speak her throat was so dry. “If you say so, sir.”

He laughed and let go of her chin to caress her cheek and tuck some hair behind her ear. “I do.” He tsked his tongue and finally stepped back. She forced herself not to wipe at her face. “It’s a pity you’re considered such a valuable scientist still. Ah well, I suppose if you ever falter I’ll get my chance.” He winked and walked out; the agents following him like murderous little ducklings.

She held it together until the last of them had left and then she collapsed back, choking on a sob. Suddenly her arms were full of a still shaking Lucy. They held each other tightly enough that there would be bruises for weeks afterwards, neither cared.

She hadn’t thought anything could be worse than Grant Ward.

She’d been wrong.

**

He came back.

Jemma couldn’t even let herself be surprised.

He came in, still with his escort of four guards, but he didn’t talk to them individually, he only hovered and asked leading questions and, Jemma was sure, tried to catch them doing something against regulations.

He had been coming in every day for the past week, and never at the same time.

Neither she nor Lucy had had a breakdown since the first day. They were lucky that whoever was no doubt watching the live stream of the lab hadn’t reported them for their weakness, but they couldn’t take the chance again.

It was Saturday. HYDRA gave those in the incentive program one day off a week, Sunday, but she suspected that those who were actually HYDRA had a more lax weekend. She hoped. Just to go one day in the lab without his slimy touch would be enough.

She was finding it harder and harder to bury herself in work when every noise made her tense.

The door opened and she grit her teeth. She’d been so hopeful that he wouldn’t come in on Saturday.

No one said anything so she decided to keep working until she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t there anymore.

“What, not even a hello?” Ward asked and Jemma felt her knees weaken with relief.

She sat down heavily on one of the lab stools and turned so she could see him. She wouldn’t fool herself into thinking that wasn’t capable of every level of terror the other man brought with him. But honestly, even if he decided to start behaving that way today it would still be a relief for it to just be someone else.

She had always been a terrible liar, so she was sure some of her feelings were visible, but she still frowned and offered a very unenthused, “Hello.”

“Huh, I expected you to be happier about finding out someone accidentally let your parents out.” He leaned back and arched an eyebrow at her.

She was glad to be sitting since she would’ve fallen otherwise. “Wha – What?” she managed to gasp and then suddenly he was right beside her. His hand hovered over her arm but he didn’t actually touch her, it was like he was waiting to catch her if she toppled.

“Some idiot let them out last night apparently. Everyone’s in an uproar.” His voice was relaxed and easy, but his eyes when she met them were intense with something.

She grabbed onto his sleeve and begged, “You’re not lying to me, are you? Why would you tell me this?”

He shifted closer but still didn’t touch her. “They’ll tell you soon enough and probably use Lucy or someone as your new incentive. I’m not lying to you.”

She released him and covered her face with her hands. She wanted to laugh and cry and scream. Her parents were safe. For now at least, her parents were safe. She couldn’t imagine they knew enough to avoid HYDRA for long, but they were safe and she could hope that whatever remained of SHIELD or maybe some other organization could help them.

She took a deep breath, then another before she had composed herself enough to look at him again.

He was idly flipping through her lab notebook, giving her a moment of privacy. She took it, grateful and greedy, and gave herself another moment to pull herself together.

She let out another shuddering breath and straightened her shoulders. He didn’t so much as glance at her, but he waited until she was collected before speaking. “Do you know who’s working on this project now?”

She blinked, a little surprised by the change of subject, but she stepped a bit closer to him so she could drag the notebook towards herself and see what he was talking about. It was the project on regeneration that they’d put her on pretty much as soon as she’d finished her ongoing projects from before the fall of SHIELD. She flipped to the last page of that report and nodded when it lined up with her memory.

He wasn’t the man in the suit, and he’d brought her enough relief today that she didn’t want to lie to him. But there was no way to be sure he was telling the truth and hadn’t just tried to throw her with that bit of knowledge. Still, she hesitated before saying exactly what she’d been told when she was ordered to stop work on the project. “I don’t have clearance to be told who takes on any subsequent versions of my work.”

He leaned sideways against the counter and watched her, tilting his head. “You’ve never balked at telling me the truth before, beautiful, why start now?”

She tilted her chin up and accepted the challenge. “I’m not lying to you, that’s precisely what I was told when I was ordered to turn my attention elsewhere.”

He waved a hand through the air grandly. “But…?”

She compressed her lips into a thin line. One of these days he was going to snap and she probably wouldn’t survive. But until then it was refreshing to get to be honest. “But they didn’t take any of my samples which someone would need to continue to work. And when I requested more liquid nitrogen space, those were the samples they told me to dispose of.”

Ward had frightened her plenty of times. His pleasant expression didn’t change at all, but the look in his eyes was enough to make her sit down heavily on her laboratory stool.

He turned away and paced.

Across the lab Jemma could hear the rattle of Lucy trying not to drop any samples.

He came back and stopped, closer than before, and flipped through her lab book again, this time stopping on a more current experiment. “I’m surprised they’re still letting you work on this,” he said, voice light. “Didn’t they take this away from you once?”

She hesitated before leaning forward enough to see what experiment he was talking about, and then she frowned and nodded. “Yes. They did. But I developed the original formula and apparently whoever took it over had a less nuanced understanding, so I got it back. Why?”

She leaned away and wished she could scoot away. He was frighteningly still.

Across the lab, Lucy dropped a box. Jemma winced, but was glad at least nothing sounded like it had broken.

Finally Ward spoke again. “Just seems like giving you the chemicals to do that would be a bad idea.”

There was a teasing note in his voice, but he wasn’t displaying any of the flirting behavior he had before, he gaze was still drilling into her lab notebook and he was more tense than she’d ever seen him.

She twisted her fingers together before offering, “I could do damage with any chemicals. That’s the point of the incentives program, that I won’t for _their_ sake.”

He nodded and turned, suddenly smiling at her, carefree again. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed it this time. “True enough! So I guess that’s a no on getting a late lunch with me then?”

She frowned and let out a slow breath. “Yeah, that’s still a no. Unless you’re going to threaten someone to make me do it.”

He winked and shrugged. “Maybe next time then, baby.”

And he was gone.

Jemma stared at the door for a long moment before turning to exchange a baffled look with Lucy.

**

She started to think about it though, after that. Not using the chemicals to escape – she’s beyond thinking that HYDRA doesn’t know about her fondness for Lucy and that they aren’t now just keeping her there to help motivate her. But just to use the formula to keep her safe, just a little while longer.

She wished she believed that she could keep herself safe forever, but she didn’t.

She still didn’t know the name of the man in the suit. He still called her Miss Simmons, but now hovered more and had started to touch her when she couldn’t get away.

She had no illusions that any of the herd of agents, always in full tactical gear, that followed him would stop anything. They would, at most, make sure she wasn’t harmed beyond her ability to work, but that was all that was likely.

She told herself she was making that particular formula to test it. She’d nearly perfected it and now there were different strengths to test. That was all.

The man in the suit came back.

Over and over.

(Ward didn’t.)

And then one day, smirking, he dismissed his constant honor guard. They left the room without a backwards glance.

Lucy trembled and turned to cleaning. She’d recently spilled a number of samples that it would take them ages to resynthesize. Jemma didn’t mind, anything that slowed down HYDRA, but she’d gotten threatened and so now, whenever the man in the suit came she would only handle things that couldn’t be ruined by a clumsy hand. (Jemma hadn’t wanted to raise the fact that a small amount of bleach anywhere it didn’t belong could, absolutely, ruin all of their progress. She hoped for Lucy’s stake it didn’t happen, she hoped for all of their sakes that it did.)

He smirked, he was always smirking, and she decided that it was rude to compare it to that of a shark. Sharks were predators, but they didn’t tease and torment their food – his smirk was too oily to be that of a shark.

She hated him.

He leaned against her lab bench, not in the way exactly but close enough that unless she moved all of the equipment over she’d come into contact with him while she carried out her experiment.

She knew her work hadn’t diminished in quality at all. She wondered if he was simply willing to risk it or if he’d had some sort of reassurance of his own protection. Or maybe, she thought as he reached out to wrap his fingers around her wrist, he thought he could throw her off enough to justify it.

She glanced up at the corner and saw that the camera had stopped, no longer making its sweep of the room.

She broke out in a cold sweat and pulled away from him.

He smirked and took a step closer. “Miss Simmons, I’m sure we can reach an understanding.”

“I’m sure we can, sir,” she said, voice only wavering a little. She turned away from him and tried to focus on her experiment, moving a petri dish full of light blue liquid, hands shaking enough that some spilled onto her gloved hands.

She could feel him at her back, so she wasn’t surprised when he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. She placed the dish down and, when he dropped his grip on her, reached out to touch his hand.

He froze.

The dendrotoxin on her glove would give her only five minutes. She wasn’t going to make a run for it though; it wasn’t like she’d ever manage that. But if she did this right…

She took a deep breath and straightened her spine, only sparing a single glance to see that whomever he had bribed not to watch what he was doing was still not watching.

By the time he came back to himself she was staring at him, head tilted slightly.

He glanced around, bewildered, and asked, trying to sound blasé, “Where are my men?”

Jemma frowned slightly and said, “Sir?”

And when he repeated his question she blinked and shifted her weight. “You sent them outside, sir. You didn’t say why.” She hesitated, then said, voice emotionless, “Are you feeling alright? We work with some fairly serious chemicals here, if you’re unused to them they can make you light headed.”

He frowned and nodded, trying to understand the situation again. “Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat before ordering, “Carry on,” and he walked out the door.

Jemma collapsed back against the lab bench, taking her time to let herself shake with relief before looking up to see Lucy staring at her, horrified.

She knew it wouldn’t be a long lasting solution. He would, in all likelihood, realize that this wasn’t the first time he’d come into the lab and from there, knowing the experiments she was working on, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out what had happened.

But she’d put if off for at least one more day.

**

It turned out she had five days before anyone showed up. But it wasn’t the man in the suit.

It was Ward.

And he didn’t show up in the lab, but in her tiny cell of a room in the middle of the night.

She didn’t scream when she heard a key in the lock, though the noise woke her. There was no point in screaming – there was no one who would come to help her.

Oh, she planned to fight, as little good as it would probably do. But she wasn’t naïve enough not to know how the encounter would end.

She clenched her jaw and sat up, somehow unsurprised that it was him. “I see you got tired of waiting.”

He arched a sardonic eyebrow at her and said, nonsensically, “Oh no, but I’m going to wear you down one of these days,” and then he raised his gun, she barely registered it as the prototype design for the dendrotoxin gun, and shot her. The world went black.

**Author's Note:**

> My writing tumblr can be found [here](http://capriciouswrites.tumblr.com/)! =D
> 
> Also, I do actually intend to continue this but I'm not sure when or how long it'll take, so for now we're going to treat this like it's complete. I hope you all enjoy. I'm terribly fond of this story, so I'd appreciate it if you were all kind in your comments! Thanks!


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